The Gneighbor Gnome

We absolutely love our neighbors, the Fa'anunus.  They are such a help and support to us as well as a blast to be around.

While we were unpacking over the summer, I was pretty excited when I pulled out a garden gnome that was given to me from a co-worker, Chris Atencio, at Walnut Hills Elementary.  I knew exactly what I was going to do with this mischievous, little guy!  I hid him in the Fa'anunu's yard with a note letting them know that the gnome game had begun--they were now to hide this little guy in our yard and we would go back and forth trying to find the best hiding spots in each other's yards.  It has been a fun joke...that got even more fun for Christmas.

After a big snow fall, the Fa'anunu children buried the gneighbor gnome in the snow on our property. 

When I found him, I thought it would be funny to create tons of snow mounds in their front yard to make them think I had buried him in one of them.  But after they stomped on all the little snow hills, they realized his hiding spot was not so obvious.

I admit, I was pretty giddy about his next hiding spot.  I made five little gnomes (one for each of the kids), we wrapped all the gnomes in a box, tied it up with a pretty bow and left the gift on the Fa'anunu's porch from "Secret Santa" and instructed them not to open it until Christmas Day.

Shortly after the box was delivered, Jen Fa'anunu, the mother of the clan, told me how excited she was to have a Secret Santa gift--and much to my surprise, I didn't blow our cover! Geoff and I giggled with delight as we waited with much anticipation to hear how they react when they discover what was in the box.

We got a text from them Christmas night about how surprised they were over our prank (their father, Tom Fa'anunu, claimed he knew the gnome was stashed in that box all along!) and were plotting their next move.

We have yet to find the gnome in the freshly fallen two feet of snow...at this rate, we just hope to figure out his hiding spot before spring!

 

It's hard enough to find motivation to dig through the snow--but to do so in sub-zero, windy conditions is another story.  I hope our gnome has his thermals on, because he may be out there for a while!

Hylie's Gift for the "Grands"

This year Hylie and I tried to get creative to help let her dear Grandparents know that we love them and that we think they are truly what their name implies--Grand!

This was our first attempt at fingerpainting, so I had no idea what to expect, but Hylie did pretty well.  I was surprised at how quickly the novelty wore off though, by the time she got to her last canvas, she was just about checked out!

Here's the finished canvas.  On the other side we attached her picture:

I like how they turned out, but to help everyone appreciate how difficult it was to get a picture of our full-of-energy little girl...here are just a few of the out-takes:

 

 

 

Christmas around our Home 2013

Initially my goal was to paint the ceilings, trim, and walls in our living and dining room area before the end of 2013.  But once I pulled out our Christmas décor, I had no desire to start moving things around, covering furniture, and spreading dust everywhere to get this accomplished.  So I decided to just enjoy the month of December with no DIY projects--and I'm quite glad I did!

Here are some fun things we enjoyed around our home this Christmas:

Decorating the Christmas Tree (with frequent "undecorating" by Hylie).

I love this Christmas wreath...I don't know if it's because I still love how the door looks with its new paint or if it's because I'm proud of myself for making it at the beginning of December so I could enjoy it all month long--regardless, I thought it helped make our home look somewhat festive.

Our new and beautiful Nativity.

Our stockings and little "Woodhouses". 

Eventually these will become our stocking holders...so they're still a work in progress.  Initially I was set on making all of our stocking when we were first married. 

I was able to get Geoff's 80% complete back in 2011, but wasn't super thrilled with how it turned out.  Then a friend of mine in Denver surprised me with the beautiful stockings seen in the picture above.  As mentioned before, everything is still a work in progress...but that work won't resume again until Christmas of 2014!

We sure enjoyed being surrounded by reminders of the Christmas Season!

 

Pitter Patter

During the week of Thanksgiving, Hylie started taking a few steps.  She still isn't walking around on her own, she mostly will only take steps when prompted and Mom and Dad are on the receiving end.  I'm sure it will be just a matter of time before we can't catch up to her!

Thanksgiving 2013

We were so grateful to have had the opportunity to go to Pennsylvania to enjoy Thanksgiving together.

Hylie was a fantastic little trooper in the car.  The only time she fussed was when she was trying to fall asleep!



Before we ate the amazing Thanksgiving Feast, Mom stood to announce that she was happy with how everything turned out!  As she should have been, everything was PHENOMENAL!

We enjoyed visiting with everyone but missed Grant, Rachel, Eli, Eric, and Morgan as well as Geoff's family.

Hylie certainly enjoyed all the food, but was so clingy during our entire stay.  If she wasn't in her Mom or Dad's arms (or gobbling up Grandma's amazing grub), she was a little grouch!  We hope she'll warm up while we're there for Christmas!

 

Music Nook

Okay, technically I shouldn't be blogging about this yet, because it's not completely finished...but I just can't help myself, I'm so excited with how well things are coming along!

One of the aspects we LOVE about this house is the amount of storage.  There is a large clothing closet in the living room which was probably intended to be a coat closet--but since we have the mud room, we decided to convert this other closet into a "Music Nook".  (I bet you won't be able to guess who's idea that was!  ha ha!)

BEFORE

This little space needed a TON of TLC.  So it took MUCH longer than I had anticipated, but I hope you'll agree all the work paid off.

There were nicks, gashes, holes, and globs that needed taken care of before we got painting.

None of these projects have been done without guidance from Dad.  I usually email him picks and questions like this:

And then we get on the phone so he can explain away what all we get to do to solve our problems!

Isn't it amazing what a fresh coat of paint does for a space?

I wanted this nook to be a focal point for the room, so I looked into some painting ideas to give the wall a 'pop' and decided to go the stenciling route.  I was too cheap to by a $50 stencil, so I decided to make my own for $2.50.  Such a feat would NOT have been possible without Geoff.  You know when you were sitting in Geometry class and wondering, "When am I ever going to use this stuff?"...well 20 years later, I can answer that question!  I was so close to figuring out how to make a geometrical stencil that could be repeated over the surface of the wall, but no matter what I did, it never aligned correctly.  I spent several hours on this problem before Geoff came home.  When he arrived, I showed him the work I had done up to that point and expressed how frustrated I was in not knowing how to make it line up correctly.  He literally looked at it for 20 seconds and said, "Oh, that's easy, all you have to do is shift the thickness of the trim over half the distance of the radius."  What?  Well, I won't go into an explanation, I'll just let you know: Geoff was 100% correct and I had a perfect template for my stencil.

I cut it out and took some advice from Pinterest on how to go about painting with a stencil.  I think this idea saved me from a disaster:

Yes, I taped a level to the stencil to ensure I didn't get off and create an abstract mess.

It's nice to have walls that haven't been painted yet, I was able to practice with the stencil in the dining room before I officially started painting the music nook.

When I started painting, I wasn't sure if I was going to like it or not.  I decided to use a flat paint for the entire wall and then stencil with the same color in high gloss.  After I stenciled a few patterns, it wasn't looking promising, but Geoff and I agreed to keep going and see how it looks when it's done. 

 

And boy, do we LOVE how it turned out!

 

 

Oh yea, we painted the stair risers, too!

So you're probably wondering what else needs to be done, right?  We're going to mount my cello and add a music quote to the wall...hopefully we'll get that figured out sooner than later--but in the meantime, we'll just enjoy our pretty wall.

 

 And here's the light fixture that caused our computer woes.  Yes, it looks much nicer than what was there before, but I wish it wasn't such a costly install.

 

Linen Closet

Blogging has been a little sparse due to Miss "Bobbie" Villa, as Geoff likes to call me.  Yes, as a result of my 'handy' pursuits, I killed our computer.  I was changing a light fixture and turned off the main power to do so, and when I turned the power back on I heard one long, steady beep coming from our computer (which was in sleep mode, and NOT turned off when I flipped the breaker).  Yes, our computer had flat-lined.  Ugh.  We're still not completely sure why it happened, but it unfortunately happened regardless as to whether or not we understand why.  So Geoff was not only amazing in finding a replacement tower, he also figured out how to put our old hard drive in our new computer and recovered ALL of our info!  This was not an easy task on Windows 8, but somehow he figured it out!  Thanks, Geoff!

So now, after that lengthy explanation, on to our Linen Closet!  We have a nice, big closet in our hallway, but it only had one shelf and a rod to hang clothes--we felt it would be much more useful as a linen closet, so we got to work. 

 Geoff removed the shelf, sanded down the walls, and then I got busy patching and painting. 



Check out those guns!

When we were working on our Mud Room, we removed the shelving that was in place for shoe storage and re-used it here!  We only had to purchase shelf supports which was a nice break for our wallet.  We cut the shelves to size and eagerly hung away!

 

Ah, what a site!